There was once a place I loved. It still exists. I could...

There was once a place I loved. It still exists. I could be
there by tonight. But the house that was there is gone and without that place
to land, to sit on the porch and watch the sky, it’s not a place for me. I ache
for this place. Or maybe I ache for the love I loved.

All the gones and dones make holes in us. Does it turn out that
our losses define our lives?

In a letter, Emily Dickinson wrote about the death of a
maid. “I winced at her loss, because I was in the habit of her.”

It’s one way to describe love. I am in the habit of you. You
are part of the pattern of my days. And there is the note of addiction, too – a
hookedness, a need. Habit, have it. I have to have it. What is love if not a
habit? A behavior pattern regularly followed until it becomes almost
involuntary, a tendency or practice that’s especially hard to give up. And even
more, to inhabit, to exist or be
situated within. I am in the habit of you. I inhabit you. I exist within.

And you exist within and what’s gone doesn’t go,
it seems. The love I loved remains. And sometimes it’s summer and sometimes it’s
spring and sometimes it’s hard and dark and all we can do is share the burden
of our days.